Well, there you go. The alternate version of Monday’s cartoon, long and tall. Whattaya think? Better? Annoying? Different Good or Different Bad?
We could even take it one step farther and stack this same cartoon onto the end of itself. Hubris could drop over endless cliffs in a cartoon loop. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll post that tomorrow.
I like it, as a break in the normal routine of straight strips. If it got to be the new normal though,it would be annoying, it takes more time to read and more time to load without bringing new content.
Use the format occasionally as a break in the normal pace of the comic, but not as a new standard.
Cool! I guess everyone has seen the second strip in the series, where Hubris climbs up the side of the house. Originally, that panel was turned sideways to fit the newspaper format.
There’s another cartoon where Hubris has climbed up a rockface on up the back of a sitting bear. That one, too, is newspaper format turned ninety degrees.
The two cartoons were wonky when seen newspaper style- the reader had to turn his paper sideways to get the gist of them. Here on the web, they run as they’re meant to be seen, with only a moment for the reader to think “Hey, this isn’t the way these cartoons usually look.”
So, I guess I’ll mix things up when it suits the cartoon. Fun.
Bit annoying.
Also, you might consider what your goals are. Do you want to remain a web comic or do you want to get newspaper syndication. If you rely on a format that is newpaper unfriendly then you might be creating a problem for yourself.
hmmm … Greg I have a challenge for you …
Draw a SINGLE panel strip, where Kara and Hubris skydive from 10,000 feet. Each pixel of drawing is equiv. to 1/4 of a foot so you’d need to do a 40,000 pixel tall drawing. 😀
Old Fart has a point. It’s one I’ve considered, but lately it’s from the opposite direction. Hubris started out as a newspaper feature because I was already employed on a syndicated strip (The Buckets)- the creation of a webcomic was a new and untried concept back in 2000. Nowadays, the consideration is this: Do I want to keep Hubris in a newspaper-esque format so that it can run more easily if I cut a deal with the syndicate to also put it on their website? So far, GoComics.com is engineered to display cartoons second-hand from newspaper’s needs (Like the old story about how the size of the Shuttle boosters is influenced, after many iterations, by the size of Roman chariot axles.) GoComics, even if newspapers continue to dwindle/convert to the web, will likely keep the traditional format for comic strips in general. The reasons for the format might even be unremembered in a couple of generations, (re: the six monkeys method of management) but the format itself remain as a vestige of print. Or it’s possible that more formats will flourish on the web before things get locked down. Hard to say.
If I may weigh in on this. I believe the second example (today’s strip) is the more effective in telling the story–not only due to the “falling panel” but also the left to right reading sequence (probably more the latter). But the question of format is an odd one to me as if it were an either/or situation. Recall that in the 1950s Walt Kelly did awesome work both in newspaper strips as well as Pogo comic books (okay, it was Kelly and his studio, but nonetheless he was in charge). Having a character or concept that can work in two or more formats is not a detriment–it’s value added!
In more contemporary terms, consider the Simpsons–an animated cartoon AND a really good comic book that sold like wildfire. Who’s going to argue with that success? (I’m not saying that Simpsons is perfect, I’m just saying there’s no argument that it was successful in two media).
So, if Hubris breaks out of the mold now and then, I’m all for it. If it brings discussion and interest to the medium of comics, all the better.
Nice points. I’m glad you mentioned the left-to-right thing. I meant to mention it before. I drew the original Hubris cartoon to read so that Hubris was facing into the ‘back’ wall of the panels- trying to psychologically slow the pace down, keep the reader from racing through and give a subtle cue that Hubris was not racing out and away but was about to get stopped altogether.
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These days, I’m not so sure of the psychological/unconscious effects of that kind of storytelling. I should probably stare at the cartoons a little more and decide. But, for the new version of the strip I had to face him left-to-right in the conventional way in order to get the nice new format to work cleanly.
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Weird, the way all this planning goes on behind the funny pictures.